Investment boom in the Russian taxi market

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In the end of January-beginning February the taxi market in Russia has seen some activity. And it’s not surprising since it is valued at $1B annually, and the Russian Civic Chamber has even estimated it at $16.5B.

Yandex.Taxi buys Ros.taxi for $12M

You get a ride on one of the two Tesla Model S owned by Yandex.Taxi, if you get lucky

Yandex, the Russian media giant and the so-called “Google of Russia” runs Yandex.Taxi service, accessible both on the web and through the app, which allows users to locate the closest taxi drivers around your location and order them. They work with different taxi firms. It really increased the efficiency of the market, since before the passengers had to wait for an hour and more before the taxi was in front of the door (crazy Moscow’s traffic). So in the end of January Yandex.Taxi announced a purchase deal with Ros.Taxi, a software for managing taxi orders, fares, and taxi driver. The value of the agreement is at $12.7M at current exchange rate, half in cash and half in shares. And a few days later, a security researcher brought to light a major vulnerability of Rus.Taxi software, as he was able to easily access the database with drivers profiles and taxi orders. To understand the magnitude of this security breach, just imagine that over 350 taxi depots across Russia use the service handling more than 1 million orders monthly, and their app Taxometre operates in more than 13,000 cars. Yandex commented that the problem was fixed.

A $2M boost for Take It

Alexander Onikiyenko, Take It’s CEO, and Pavel Varzumov, an ex-executive of Ros.Taxi, mentioned above, and another private investor are planning to inject $2M in Take It, the up-and-coming rival of Yandex.Taxi.

The company claims to offer a cheap service using the company’s own fleet, unlike Uber or Yandex.Taxi. Launched July 2015, Take It owns 1,200 cars claiming that they are all under 2 years old (which is truly unique for this industry in Russia), and they are trying to get more taxicab companies under its control. They rely on cheap prices to beat the competition.

Take It is planning to expand abroad, and they already have some agreed partnerships with providers of transfer services to/from airports in France.

Varzumov explains such a huge investment into a young company in a market with strong competitors with the team factor: “You put your money not in the company, but in the team that runs it. We believe in this team.”

Uber came to Russia in 2013, but it hasn’t really picked up there, and now it’s not getting easier to grab a bite of this pie.

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Vita Radkevitch-Turlo

Prior to joining GoalEurope Vita has been working in the IT outsourcing industry in a number of marketing and PR roles. Before that, Vita studied in the US at Bard College and worked in South Korea at SK Securities and the European Union Chamber of Commerce. Speaks fluent Russian, English and French.